Parents often resort to spelling or abbreviating words in front of children so that the children do not get riled up by sensitive information. For example, if David and I want to say "children's museum" in front of Clara, but we don't want to go there, we call it the CM; otherwise, if she hears the phrase and we DON'T go there, she will freak out unduly. We spell out certain snacks that are special treats, like c-o-o-k-i-e-s, so that we have the option of NOT giving one to her. Like I said, if she hears a word, and the object the word symbolizes is not forthcoming, then there is t-r-o-u-b-l-e.
Sometimes David will spell something out that, in my opinion, does not need to be spelled out. He'll say, "Can you take that thing away from Clara. It's a c-h-o-k-i-n-g-h-a-z-a-r-d. Not only does it take me forever to figure out what the hell he's spelling, but also I can't see the danger in just saying the word. Tonight it was, "Do you mind if I do the d-i-s-h-e-s?" indicating that he felt like doing dishes tonight instead of giving Clara her bath. He and I switch off doing one or the other after dinner every night.
He cracks me up when he does this spelling out of seemingly harmless words. H-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Suck
Diego can't nurse right now, and so there's major mayhem over here.
I had a CTA today -- a CT Angiogram, like a CT Scan with intravenous iodine contrast, which intensifies the view of the brain more than a normal CT scan. As a consequence of the iodine contrast, I cannot breastfeed Diego for a minimum of 24 hours. Well, I could breastfeed him, but the pamphlet from the pharmaceutical company that the nurse gave me says in effect "we [the drug company] pretty much know that this contrast is passed undiluted through breastmilk to baby. We don't know what this does to baby. The mother may bottle feed baby for 24 hours."
I've heard that some doctors calmly say there's no necessary waiting period to breast feed after getting iodine contrast. But then there's the technician today who, when answering the question I asked everyone from receptionist to phlembotomist to nurse to technician, said gravely, "well...every hospital has a different opinion, but we recommend...48 hours."
48 hours is a long time to wait for a delayed flight, say, or a golf marathon to end on a major network like ABC or CBS. 48 hours is a long time for a sleepover with your best friends when you're all 13 -- and these are your best friends. 48 hours is a long time for even the most pleasurable of activities.
So imagine 48 hours of uninterrupted baby-crying. Baby's in pain because I'm denying him my nipple, offering him instead a silicone rendition of it, which is nothing like the real thing. And he knows it. And I am listening to him wail, screeeeeeching like a favorite pet being run over by the neighborhood gang -- over and over -- just for the torture. And as bad as this pet tragedy sounds, baby-being-denied-real-nipple-crying sounds worse. To me it does, anyway.
Imagine how long this event feels.
His confusion and distress create in me a frenzy -- a chaotic ache to quell my child's trauma.
I am drinking so much water right now, trying to push this iodine contrast out of my body as fast as possible. My kidneys are double-timing it.
Daddy is caring for baby right now. I think they're bonding. Daddy's all baby-whispering in there, getting Diego to take the bottle. Diego knows by now that Daddy has no boobs, so it's easier for Daddy to get him to take the bottle. But true to baby-whispering form, Daddy is doing what seems to have been impossible only moments ago: get him to suck my milk from the artificial nipple. Bless him.
I had a CTA today -- a CT Angiogram, like a CT Scan with intravenous iodine contrast, which intensifies the view of the brain more than a normal CT scan. As a consequence of the iodine contrast, I cannot breastfeed Diego for a minimum of 24 hours. Well, I could breastfeed him, but the pamphlet from the pharmaceutical company that the nurse gave me says in effect "we [the drug company] pretty much know that this contrast is passed undiluted through breastmilk to baby. We don't know what this does to baby. The mother may bottle feed baby for 24 hours."
I've heard that some doctors calmly say there's no necessary waiting period to breast feed after getting iodine contrast. But then there's the technician today who, when answering the question I asked everyone from receptionist to phlembotomist to nurse to technician, said gravely, "well...every hospital has a different opinion, but we recommend...48 hours."
48 hours is a long time to wait for a delayed flight, say, or a golf marathon to end on a major network like ABC or CBS. 48 hours is a long time for a sleepover with your best friends when you're all 13 -- and these are your best friends. 48 hours is a long time for even the most pleasurable of activities.
So imagine 48 hours of uninterrupted baby-crying. Baby's in pain because I'm denying him my nipple, offering him instead a silicone rendition of it, which is nothing like the real thing. And he knows it. And I am listening to him wail, screeeeeeching like a favorite pet being run over by the neighborhood gang -- over and over -- just for the torture. And as bad as this pet tragedy sounds, baby-being-denied-real-nipple-crying sounds worse. To me it does, anyway.
Imagine how long this event feels.
His confusion and distress create in me a frenzy -- a chaotic ache to quell my child's trauma.
I am drinking so much water right now, trying to push this iodine contrast out of my body as fast as possible. My kidneys are double-timing it.
Daddy is caring for baby right now. I think they're bonding. Daddy's all baby-whispering in there, getting Diego to take the bottle. Diego knows by now that Daddy has no boobs, so it's easier for Daddy to get him to take the bottle. But true to baby-whispering form, Daddy is doing what seems to have been impossible only moments ago: get him to suck my milk from the artificial nipple. Bless him.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Today I Die
Two caesareans, one appendectomy, one auto accident, one hard fall-down during my seventh month of pregnancy, and one brain hemorrhage later, I am here to tell you that all those cliches, all the poems, all the plays and great books about the fleeting nature of life -- life, the expanse between being born and being dead -- are true. There is nothing trite about the sentiment. I now know because by some amazing grace I recently had a brain hemorrhage and not only did I live, but I live with VERY few complicating factors as a result.
For example, I am still as wickedly smart as I was before. And funny. I'm funnier than ever now. My husband might say I'm funny in a "touched" sort of way; and he would argue that it didn't start as a result of the hemorrhage. I can see his point; for example, this morning I aerobicized around the living room for 20 minutes in my pajamas because dammit it's time for me to start losing 25 pounds. He drank his coffee on the couch and watched me while I danced and jumped jacks and lifted legs to the Breeders (without irony), the Pretenders (which kept skipping) and some Romanian gypsy music.
Recently, I watched Robert Altman's new movie, "Prairie Home Companion." Awesome movie. The backstage banter at the beginning is perfect; anyone who has spent time getting ready backstage before a show will feel the real as captured by Streep, Tomlin, Harrleson, Reilly, etc. The movie is an allegory about the nature of life -- its sweetness, the brilliance all around us that we don't see until it's too late, the cruelty of it, the darkness. At the end of the movie, Kevin Kline, playing Guy Noir, quotes a famous Robert Herrick poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time." Here's the first stanza:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
When I taught British Literature, inevitably this poem would come up in the syllabus. I never really cared for it before, but now it plays in my head, like a happy ghost, probably 20 times a day.
My step brother recently told me about some sect of monks who wake up every morning and say to themselves, "today I die," intimating that they must live that day as if it were their last on earth. After my brain hemorrhage, I realized that each day previous to the one I found myself in might very well have been my last; the veil between life and death is thinner than I ever imagined. I mean, one morning I laid down to take a nap, and I woke up 20 minutes later with the worst headache of my life. By that same time the next morning, I had had three MRIs, two CT scans, one angiogram, and a large amount of morphine and other types of pharmaceuticals, and the only certainty the neurologists could tell me was that I was very, very, very lucky. They had no idea why it happened and told me that I was "a medical mystery."
Now I'm living as if each day is my last, because it could be. It could be yours. Really. And if it is: what do you want to do?
Here's my list:
1) Hang out with my kids
2) Have sex with my husband
4) Tell my family and friends that I love them
3) Write
Everything else is negotiable, but those four things are not.
For example, I am still as wickedly smart as I was before. And funny. I'm funnier than ever now. My husband might say I'm funny in a "touched" sort of way; and he would argue that it didn't start as a result of the hemorrhage. I can see his point; for example, this morning I aerobicized around the living room for 20 minutes in my pajamas because dammit it's time for me to start losing 25 pounds. He drank his coffee on the couch and watched me while I danced and jumped jacks and lifted legs to the Breeders (without irony), the Pretenders (which kept skipping) and some Romanian gypsy music.
Recently, I watched Robert Altman's new movie, "Prairie Home Companion." Awesome movie. The backstage banter at the beginning is perfect; anyone who has spent time getting ready backstage before a show will feel the real as captured by Streep, Tomlin, Harrleson, Reilly, etc. The movie is an allegory about the nature of life -- its sweetness, the brilliance all around us that we don't see until it's too late, the cruelty of it, the darkness. At the end of the movie, Kevin Kline, playing Guy Noir, quotes a famous Robert Herrick poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time." Here's the first stanza:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
When I taught British Literature, inevitably this poem would come up in the syllabus. I never really cared for it before, but now it plays in my head, like a happy ghost, probably 20 times a day.
My step brother recently told me about some sect of monks who wake up every morning and say to themselves, "today I die," intimating that they must live that day as if it were their last on earth. After my brain hemorrhage, I realized that each day previous to the one I found myself in might very well have been my last; the veil between life and death is thinner than I ever imagined. I mean, one morning I laid down to take a nap, and I woke up 20 minutes later with the worst headache of my life. By that same time the next morning, I had had three MRIs, two CT scans, one angiogram, and a large amount of morphine and other types of pharmaceuticals, and the only certainty the neurologists could tell me was that I was very, very, very lucky. They had no idea why it happened and told me that I was "a medical mystery."
Now I'm living as if each day is my last, because it could be. It could be yours. Really. And if it is: what do you want to do?
Here's my list:
1) Hang out with my kids
2) Have sex with my husband
4) Tell my family and friends that I love them
3) Write
Everything else is negotiable, but those four things are not.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Monday, October 23, 2006
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
One more stress bot....
Today our landlord came to remove this disgusting, mold-covered window unit from the window directly next to where David's head rests each night during sleep. We've never used the unit, and I figured it was inoperable, given the general disrepair of the thing. Plus, David has had too many sinus infections for the thing to be benign. Since we have a newborn coming home with us in two weeks, and will be sleeping in our room with us for a while, we pushed the landlord to remove the grody window unit pronto. He's going on vacation in the Southern Rockies for two weeks, leaving Thursday, and we really wanted him to get it out before he leaves.
So he calls and says, "I'm just about mad enough to come take out a window unit. Is this a convenient time?"
It's Clara's bath and bedtime, but I say "yes."
"I'll be up in 5 to 10 minutes," he says. In our landlord time that means anywhere between 20 minutes to 20 days.
I move the bed and get the area ready for him to remove the unit from the window. He finally arrives after 25 minutes. "I'm gonna leave in that other unit on the other side of the house, in case the compressor breaks and you need to seek refuge."
In case the compressor breaks?!?!
"Don't say that, Bob," I say.
"I just hope it doesn't," he says.
He's just trying to scare me, because supposedly I scare him. Right? Now I'm all stressed that the fucking air conditioner is going to break while he's high up in the Rocky Mountains. While we have a newborn in the house.
"Where is that unit gonna be stored, in case the compressor does break while you're gone."
"This thing is gone, Missy. If it breaks, you'll have to go to the other room."
"It's not gonna break," I say.
"I sure hope not."
Does he know something I don't know? Is the warranty expired? Doesn't he sound like a really nice guy?
The air-conditioner is not going to break while he's gone. But in case it does, I made him give me the name of the company that will come out and fix it. Jason McCann services; something like that.
"These people get greedy," he says.
If the air-conditioner breaks while he's gone, I don't care how much they tell me it's gonna cost to repair it; you can be sure I'll give them the go-ahead.
So he calls and says, "I'm just about mad enough to come take out a window unit. Is this a convenient time?"
It's Clara's bath and bedtime, but I say "yes."
"I'll be up in 5 to 10 minutes," he says. In our landlord time that means anywhere between 20 minutes to 20 days.
I move the bed and get the area ready for him to remove the unit from the window. He finally arrives after 25 minutes. "I'm gonna leave in that other unit on the other side of the house, in case the compressor breaks and you need to seek refuge."
In case the compressor breaks?!?!
"Don't say that, Bob," I say.
"I just hope it doesn't," he says.
He's just trying to scare me, because supposedly I scare him. Right? Now I'm all stressed that the fucking air conditioner is going to break while he's high up in the Rocky Mountains. While we have a newborn in the house.
"Where is that unit gonna be stored, in case the compressor does break while you're gone."
"This thing is gone, Missy. If it breaks, you'll have to go to the other room."
"It's not gonna break," I say.
"I sure hope not."
Does he know something I don't know? Is the warranty expired? Doesn't he sound like a really nice guy?
The air-conditioner is not going to break while he's gone. But in case it does, I made him give me the name of the company that will come out and fix it. Jason McCann services; something like that.
"These people get greedy," he says.
If the air-conditioner breaks while he's gone, I don't care how much they tell me it's gonna cost to repair it; you can be sure I'll give them the go-ahead.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Quarterly Update
It's been too long, but I've been so pregnant. Still am, though not much longer to go: two weeks or so. The baby boy in me is big, very big, so big the doctor put me on a diet to curb him from growing too big too fast. So I dieted using strict portion control, eating lots of fruits and raw vegetables. After a week on this diet, which is a diabetic diet, I felt better than I have in 10 years. Once the doctor told me the baby's growth had gone back to normal, I tripped a little off the diet. I'm still eating much better than I was before the diet; I'm gaining the perfect amount of weight each week, says my OB. Because sugar's the only drug left to a pregnant woman, it can be abused and have a deleterious effect on her nutritional input. It did on mine, PD (pre-diet).
As soon as I started feeling better, I got a new job, one that came to me through an acquaintance. I'm recruiting sales people for positions in my acquaintance’s company. A global corporation has recently bought his company. I'm recruiting sales people in many many cities to sell a "financial solutions" product. When I took the job, it sounded simpler than it's been in reality.
Today I'm not feeling so hot, actually. I've been nauseous and headachy and winded. The August heat and humidity are hard to begin with, but the heat and humidity coupled with my having a 17-month-old toddler and being 8.5 months pregnant, makes living harder than normal. Baby boy (still unnamed) moves around a lot and uses BIG movements, grand gestures. Sometimes it feels like he's tap-dancing on my bladder. Often it feels like he's tap-dancing on my bladder. I have to pee all the time. Maybe there is an hour's worth of minutes during the day when I don't have to go pee. My dad says that this condition, typical of pregnancy, resembles the condition men find themselves in when they get older.
My daughter Clara has entered the superest cutest stage: she's extremely verbal, but not coherent in Standard English. She toddles around discovering new things -- new sights, new, new sounds, new moods -- all day long. This past Sunday morning, she pulled a paperback copy of Romeo and Juliet from the bookcase and carried it around with her throughout the day. That evening, when we got to the book-reading part of our night time routine, she picked up Romeo and Juliet from the floor and handed it to me.
"You want me to read Romeo and Juliet to you?" I laughed.
"Yeah," she said. Yeah is her one perfectly pronounced word at this point.
"Are you sure?" I said.
"Yeah," she said.
"Okay....Let's see....what should I read?" I scanned the play, looking for a sonnet or a series of lines that I could pull out and read to satisfy her whim. Not finding one easily, I settled on starting from the beginning. "Act I, Scene I," I began.
I read three or four pages to her that night, finishing at the part where Capulet declares he's having a party and sends his illiterate servant off with a list of guests to invite. Periodically, while reading the play, I'd stop and ask her if she wanted me to read Goodnight Moon (a highly poetic board book, by the way). She scowled and growled loudly. "You want me to keep reading Romeo and Juliet?" I asked.
"Yeah." She smiled and went back to drinking her before-bed milk, snuggled up in my armpit, listening to and babbling along with Shakespeare.
The next night it was the same story: only Romeo and Juliet would do. Tonight, bedtime reading started out the same way, but when we started Act II, Scene I, she finally lost interest (just when I'd found my rhythm!), demanding Easter Egg Surprise instead.
She's at a stage in her development where she has strong relationships with her cow stuffed animal and her bunny stuffed animal. She protests, like any red-blooded child, going to bed each night, but if I ask her if she wants to read Cow and Bunny a story in her crib, she acquiesces and goes gently into bed. Then she spends the next twenty minutes "reading" to her animals. I hear her in her room, reading to her animal friends wbo share her crib, and at moments like this, I can't quite believe how beautiful life is.
As soon as I started feeling better, I got a new job, one that came to me through an acquaintance. I'm recruiting sales people for positions in my acquaintance’s company. A global corporation has recently bought his company. I'm recruiting sales people in many many cities to sell a "financial solutions" product. When I took the job, it sounded simpler than it's been in reality.
Today I'm not feeling so hot, actually. I've been nauseous and headachy and winded. The August heat and humidity are hard to begin with, but the heat and humidity coupled with my having a 17-month-old toddler and being 8.5 months pregnant, makes living harder than normal. Baby boy (still unnamed) moves around a lot and uses BIG movements, grand gestures. Sometimes it feels like he's tap-dancing on my bladder. Often it feels like he's tap-dancing on my bladder. I have to pee all the time. Maybe there is an hour's worth of minutes during the day when I don't have to go pee. My dad says that this condition, typical of pregnancy, resembles the condition men find themselves in when they get older.
My daughter Clara has entered the superest cutest stage: she's extremely verbal, but not coherent in Standard English. She toddles around discovering new things -- new sights, new, new sounds, new moods -- all day long. This past Sunday morning, she pulled a paperback copy of Romeo and Juliet from the bookcase and carried it around with her throughout the day. That evening, when we got to the book-reading part of our night time routine, she picked up Romeo and Juliet from the floor and handed it to me.
"You want me to read Romeo and Juliet to you?" I laughed.
"Yeah," she said. Yeah is her one perfectly pronounced word at this point.
"Are you sure?" I said.
"Yeah," she said.
"Okay....Let's see....what should I read?" I scanned the play, looking for a sonnet or a series of lines that I could pull out and read to satisfy her whim. Not finding one easily, I settled on starting from the beginning. "Act I, Scene I," I began.
I read three or four pages to her that night, finishing at the part where Capulet declares he's having a party and sends his illiterate servant off with a list of guests to invite. Periodically, while reading the play, I'd stop and ask her if she wanted me to read Goodnight Moon (a highly poetic board book, by the way). She scowled and growled loudly. "You want me to keep reading Romeo and Juliet?" I asked.
"Yeah." She smiled and went back to drinking her before-bed milk, snuggled up in my armpit, listening to and babbling along with Shakespeare.
The next night it was the same story: only Romeo and Juliet would do. Tonight, bedtime reading started out the same way, but when we started Act II, Scene I, she finally lost interest (just when I'd found my rhythm!), demanding Easter Egg Surprise instead.
She's at a stage in her development where she has strong relationships with her cow stuffed animal and her bunny stuffed animal. She protests, like any red-blooded child, going to bed each night, but if I ask her if she wants to read Cow and Bunny a story in her crib, she acquiesces and goes gently into bed. Then she spends the next twenty minutes "reading" to her animals. I hear her in her room, reading to her animal friends wbo share her crib, and at moments like this, I can't quite believe how beautiful life is.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Monica
"Hi Monica!"
During my 14th year, strangers in my relatively small hometown started greeting me this way, mysteriously often. The first few times, I felt like I must be imagining it: Did I just get called Monica? Again? After about the 8th time it happened, the mistaken identity began to bother me.
"Who's Monica?" I asked my friend Leah.
"She's that other redheaded girl," Leah said. "She goes to Marco." Marco Forster Junior High School was the public Junior High School in town. I went to the Catholic school. Leah played fullback on the AYSO soccer team where I played goalie. We'd been Brownies and Girl Scouts together in Elementary. We were also in National Charity League together during high school. Incidentally, we also went to the same college, although we didn’t room together. Leah liked nothing better than to hang out and chat with me in the backfield while our forwards were running the ball furiously toward the goal. (I owe much of my former soccer goalie prowess to Leah's sieve-like defense of the goal box.) Leah went to public school; therefore, she knew this Monica. "She's taller than you are, but you look a lot alike," she said.
Instead of playing soccer, Monica danced ballet, which explains why our paths took so long to cross. We finally met when our different National Charity League subchapters convened at a common house. The girls in Monica's subchapter were debutantes. This meeting-nay-party was all about how to give ourselves manicures -- a very useful skill, like typing, for example; how to arrange flowers; how to sit down in a chair properly and what to do with your legs while sitting. My own subchapter did community service together: we candy striped; we patterned a local quadriplegic girl who had been paralyzed since birth; we delivered meals on wheels, read for Head Start students, walked together, along with our mothers, in the Swallows Day Parade. A few times, we met with California stateswomen, like Marian Bergeson. I have to say that as noble as these things were, I remember more from that one meeting where I learned manicure skills (always file in one direction), flower arranging skills (cut the stems under running water), and sitting etiquette (back up to the chair until the backs of your legs brush the seat; sit straight down; fold your ankes around one another and let your legs lean together to one side. Never! Cross! Your! Legs!).
It might have been through our participation in this group that my parents found out about Young Republican Camp, where they sent me when I was 16. But that is a totally awesome memory that I'm reserving for a future writing.
The moment I saw her, I knew I'd met my match.
"You must be Monica," I said.
"You're Christa!" she said.
"We don't look alike at all," I said.
"No," she said.
We stood staring at one another, trying to belie our greedy need to find our difference in one another. Then, recognizing our awkward silence, we tried to start talking again.
"I guess our hair color is kind of similar," I said.
"And it's cut sort of similar," she said. Our haircut resembled the cut that Tracy Austin, the 80's teen tennis star, sported in the 70s: longish, with bangs and slight feathering around the face.
"Yeah," I said.
Monica and I didn't say anything to each other for the rest of the party, and I never saw her again.
During my 14th year, strangers in my relatively small hometown started greeting me this way, mysteriously often. The first few times, I felt like I must be imagining it: Did I just get called Monica? Again? After about the 8th time it happened, the mistaken identity began to bother me.
"Who's Monica?" I asked my friend Leah.
"She's that other redheaded girl," Leah said. "She goes to Marco." Marco Forster Junior High School was the public Junior High School in town. I went to the Catholic school. Leah played fullback on the AYSO soccer team where I played goalie. We'd been Brownies and Girl Scouts together in Elementary. We were also in National Charity League together during high school. Incidentally, we also went to the same college, although we didn’t room together. Leah liked nothing better than to hang out and chat with me in the backfield while our forwards were running the ball furiously toward the goal. (I owe much of my former soccer goalie prowess to Leah's sieve-like defense of the goal box.) Leah went to public school; therefore, she knew this Monica. "She's taller than you are, but you look a lot alike," she said.
Instead of playing soccer, Monica danced ballet, which explains why our paths took so long to cross. We finally met when our different National Charity League subchapters convened at a common house. The girls in Monica's subchapter were debutantes. This meeting-nay-party was all about how to give ourselves manicures -- a very useful skill, like typing, for example; how to arrange flowers; how to sit down in a chair properly and what to do with your legs while sitting. My own subchapter did community service together: we candy striped; we patterned a local quadriplegic girl who had been paralyzed since birth; we delivered meals on wheels, read for Head Start students, walked together, along with our mothers, in the Swallows Day Parade. A few times, we met with California stateswomen, like Marian Bergeson. I have to say that as noble as these things were, I remember more from that one meeting where I learned manicure skills (always file in one direction), flower arranging skills (cut the stems under running water), and sitting etiquette (back up to the chair until the backs of your legs brush the seat; sit straight down; fold your ankes around one another and let your legs lean together to one side. Never! Cross! Your! Legs!).
It might have been through our participation in this group that my parents found out about Young Republican Camp, where they sent me when I was 16. But that is a totally awesome memory that I'm reserving for a future writing.
The moment I saw her, I knew I'd met my match.
"You must be Monica," I said.
"You're Christa!" she said.
"We don't look alike at all," I said.
"No," she said.
We stood staring at one another, trying to belie our greedy need to find our difference in one another. Then, recognizing our awkward silence, we tried to start talking again.
"I guess our hair color is kind of similar," I said.
"And it's cut sort of similar," she said. Our haircut resembled the cut that Tracy Austin, the 80's teen tennis star, sported in the 70s: longish, with bangs and slight feathering around the face.
"Yeah," I said.
Monica and I didn't say anything to each other for the rest of the party, and I never saw her again.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Fate and Free Will
Lately, I've been wrestling with fate. That is, I've been contemplating the concept that one's existence requires her to behave in accordance with the life choices she has made. I'm operating here under the understanding that the life choices people make constitute their "destiny" or fate.
Ideally, we make our life choices consciously; for example, a woman may love many, many men in her lifetime; however, when it comes to choosing a mate, she combines as much awareness as she can muster with a generous dose of dumb luck and chooses one man. What results is the life she leads as a married woman to that particular man; i.e., her "fate." Likewise, a woman gets pregnant with her husband (they are poor artists, they are "not ready," they have decided to wait; nevertheless, she gets pregnant the old fashioned way--without "planning") and chooses to go ahead and become a mother, knowing that having children will complicate her life in the deepest way. She lives, in short, with her eyes and heart open to the experiences she's having; she does not crash or thrash through her life, complaining that the life she's creating for herself -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- is unfair. She does not become a victim of her fate.
Sometimes, while contemplating my fate, passages from Milan Kundera's novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being seep into my consciousness, passages like "The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become" (Kundera 5).
Before I became a new mom/shut-in, I enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle: I played in a band; I wrote and produced original performances; I acted in plays; I taught English Literature; I traveled the world. My husband and I spent a lot of time out with our friends. We attended parties -- pool parties, cast parties, democratic parties, garden parties, galas. We even threw a party now and then. Mine was a relatively light existence, a troubled existence to be sure -- whose isn't? -- but free of irrevocable responsibility for the most part.
Not so much these days.
Recently, my friend Jason asked me if I wanted to be in a play -- the world premiere rock opera by Daniel Johnston and Infernal Bridegroom Productions. Jason is directing it. It's gonna be amazing, and I would love to be in the play more than most anything else. But I had to say no. No. No. No. Because not only am I a wife, and the mom of a fourteen month old daughter, but also because I'm carrying another baby in my uterus. These three things are major responsibilities, each one compounded by the next. Being a wife is easy; being a wife and mother is exponentially harder. Being a mother of two, I've heard, is exponentially harder than being a mother of one. Besides the responsibilities to my family, there's the reality that by six p.m., I can barely stand. The only thing I'm successful at during the evening hours is passing out from exhaustion.
Is it worth it? Is giving up this extravagant, seemingly expansive lifestyle for the limited, burdened one of family worth the exchange?
Yes. It is. I think. I hope.
I used to think of the Fate phenomenon as the opposite of Free Will. But over the years, I've learned that Fate is a result of Free Will; there is no versus between the two. They are intimately connected, in the same way all great oppositions are connected: dark/light, male/female, parent/child, heaviness/lightness. There is no one without the other.
There is no extravagance without burden.
Ideally, we make our life choices consciously; for example, a woman may love many, many men in her lifetime; however, when it comes to choosing a mate, she combines as much awareness as she can muster with a generous dose of dumb luck and chooses one man. What results is the life she leads as a married woman to that particular man; i.e., her "fate." Likewise, a woman gets pregnant with her husband (they are poor artists, they are "not ready," they have decided to wait; nevertheless, she gets pregnant the old fashioned way--without "planning") and chooses to go ahead and become a mother, knowing that having children will complicate her life in the deepest way. She lives, in short, with her eyes and heart open to the experiences she's having; she does not crash or thrash through her life, complaining that the life she's creating for herself -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- is unfair. She does not become a victim of her fate.
Sometimes, while contemplating my fate, passages from Milan Kundera's novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being seep into my consciousness, passages like "The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become" (Kundera 5).
Before I became a new mom/shut-in, I enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle: I played in a band; I wrote and produced original performances; I acted in plays; I taught English Literature; I traveled the world. My husband and I spent a lot of time out with our friends. We attended parties -- pool parties, cast parties, democratic parties, garden parties, galas. We even threw a party now and then. Mine was a relatively light existence, a troubled existence to be sure -- whose isn't? -- but free of irrevocable responsibility for the most part.
Not so much these days.
Recently, my friend Jason asked me if I wanted to be in a play -- the world premiere rock opera by Daniel Johnston and Infernal Bridegroom Productions. Jason is directing it. It's gonna be amazing, and I would love to be in the play more than most anything else. But I had to say no. No. No. No. Because not only am I a wife, and the mom of a fourteen month old daughter, but also because I'm carrying another baby in my uterus. These three things are major responsibilities, each one compounded by the next. Being a wife is easy; being a wife and mother is exponentially harder. Being a mother of two, I've heard, is exponentially harder than being a mother of one. Besides the responsibilities to my family, there's the reality that by six p.m., I can barely stand. The only thing I'm successful at during the evening hours is passing out from exhaustion.
Is it worth it? Is giving up this extravagant, seemingly expansive lifestyle for the limited, burdened one of family worth the exchange?
Yes. It is. I think. I hope.
I used to think of the Fate phenomenon as the opposite of Free Will. But over the years, I've learned that Fate is a result of Free Will; there is no versus between the two. They are intimately connected, in the same way all great oppositions are connected: dark/light, male/female, parent/child, heaviness/lightness. There is no one without the other.
There is no extravagance without burden.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Cut Loose
I believe I can come out now.
For years when I've gone to get a haircut, and the stylist asks me how I'd like it cut, I've wanted to say, "like Keith Richards." But I haven't said it, because I was afraid of the resulting look. And also, when I did say it once, the hairperson looked at me like I needed to up my meds.
I don't take meds; I am totally serious.
So today I went to a new place. I get my hair cut twice a year. I wash it twice a month, maybe three times. Let's say I'm low maintenance when it comes to my hair. Mostly, I pull it up into some sort of situation. Lately I've been wearing it plaited, but I started to worry that I might end up one of those old women with braids, and with that vision in my head, I couldn't wait any longer to get it cut. I heard from a good friend, a visual artist, that John Chao was the man for long hair in Houston. So I made an appointment with John Chao. Turns out, the rumor that he's the guy for long hair is fallacious. He's also the guy for short hair, medium length hair, curly hair, gray hair, hair color, etc. Apparently, people go to him all the time because they've heard that he's the guy for ______ hair.
John Chao did not ask me how I wanted my hair cut. He simply began cutting it, dry. He said that he was going to cut for a while to get a feel for my hair and then he would figure out what to do. I liked him immediately.
While he cut, he told me tricks for how to bring out the natural wave in my hair. He said, "You must begin preparing your waves in the shower." Then he launched into a step by step description of how to prepare my hair for waves. Only shampoo the scalp -- never the ends. Wash with just water at least once a week. While you're in the shower, separate your hair into sections, and let the hot water hit your scalp while you pull the natural oils that normally live on your scalp all the way from the roots to the ends. There was even more arcane knowledge imparted by John Chao, more than I've ever heard or read before. He applauded me for washing my hair only twice a month. I was charmed. Because he speaks with a thick Asian accent, I had to listen veeeery closely to absorb all his hair wisdom.
To cap it off, I left the salon looking like the rock star I used to be but never was. In fact, I look a little like Keith Richards. A ladylike Keith Richards. It was as if John Chao read my mind, discovered my secret hair wish by feeling his way through my hair.
John Chao cured me of my everlasting bad mood. I heartily tipped him. As I left, he walked me to the door, opened it for me, and said, "Enjoy your new life."
For years when I've gone to get a haircut, and the stylist asks me how I'd like it cut, I've wanted to say, "like Keith Richards." But I haven't said it, because I was afraid of the resulting look. And also, when I did say it once, the hairperson looked at me like I needed to up my meds.
I don't take meds; I am totally serious.
So today I went to a new place. I get my hair cut twice a year. I wash it twice a month, maybe three times. Let's say I'm low maintenance when it comes to my hair. Mostly, I pull it up into some sort of situation. Lately I've been wearing it plaited, but I started to worry that I might end up one of those old women with braids, and with that vision in my head, I couldn't wait any longer to get it cut. I heard from a good friend, a visual artist, that John Chao was the man for long hair in Houston. So I made an appointment with John Chao. Turns out, the rumor that he's the guy for long hair is fallacious. He's also the guy for short hair, medium length hair, curly hair, gray hair, hair color, etc. Apparently, people go to him all the time because they've heard that he's the guy for ______ hair.
John Chao did not ask me how I wanted my hair cut. He simply began cutting it, dry. He said that he was going to cut for a while to get a feel for my hair and then he would figure out what to do. I liked him immediately.
While he cut, he told me tricks for how to bring out the natural wave in my hair. He said, "You must begin preparing your waves in the shower." Then he launched into a step by step description of how to prepare my hair for waves. Only shampoo the scalp -- never the ends. Wash with just water at least once a week. While you're in the shower, separate your hair into sections, and let the hot water hit your scalp while you pull the natural oils that normally live on your scalp all the way from the roots to the ends. There was even more arcane knowledge imparted by John Chao, more than I've ever heard or read before. He applauded me for washing my hair only twice a month. I was charmed. Because he speaks with a thick Asian accent, I had to listen veeeery closely to absorb all his hair wisdom.
To cap it off, I left the salon looking like the rock star I used to be but never was. In fact, I look a little like Keith Richards. A ladylike Keith Richards. It was as if John Chao read my mind, discovered my secret hair wish by feeling his way through my hair.
John Chao cured me of my everlasting bad mood. I heartily tipped him. As I left, he walked me to the door, opened it for me, and said, "Enjoy your new life."
Friday, February 10, 2006
Misanthropy
I am sick of everything: internet forums, blogs (including this one), folk, cars – not only SUVs – toast, whining toddlers, do-gooders, neck pain, grandfather clocks, Baby Einstein, Walt Disney, shiny pennies, romantic comedies, Hollywood video, brick and mortar monopolies, poetry, peanut butter, stale pancakes, public and private schools, oil slicks, pot holes, refried beans. The list, of course, goes on ad infinitum. Periodically, I enter a fog of dense misanthropy, which hovers around my head for a week or so. When it lifts, I feel refreshed, ready to blaze back into the world with an open, hopeful heart once again.
If I were to read the newspaper on a regular basis, the fog would never lift. I don’t know how newshounds live with themselves and the other 6.5 billion people on earth.
Maybe they only live with themselves.
If I were to read the newspaper on a regular basis, the fog would never lift. I don’t know how newshounds live with themselves and the other 6.5 billion people on earth.
Maybe they only live with themselves.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Xta’s Scrap Book
Before I got pregnant, I frequented smoky bars, punk rock clubs, speakeasies, blue-black alleyways. I was hung over nine out of twelve weekends. Today, my daughter turns 11 months old, and I admit that sleep trumps drunk.
Becoming a mother necessitates a dramatic shift in behavior. For example, recently I’ve been ducking into stores with names like “Scrapbooking with Grammy,” looking for a 6x6, linen-covered, elegant number produced by a company called 4 TIMES. Someone gave me this scrapbook as a shower gift, and although I didn’t know what to do with it then, I am a different person now. A scrapbooking addiction has replaced the party girl in me. And like any addict, I will go to great lengths to feed my need.
In order to document the wonder that is my daughter Clara as well as the ineffable love I feel for her, I found myself maneuvering a bright blue shopping cart through the aisles of Hobby Lobby last week. The 4 TIMES scrapbook proved particularly elusive. Not only did I fail to locate this particular brand, but also the whole scrapbooking aisle looked like desolation row. I wondered: Is scrapbooking becoming obsolete? Are craftfolk in high places phasing out this past time just as I am getting into it?
On to Michael’s: another strip-mall acre of dust-collecting crap for sale. I rolled my shopping cart past teetering displays of ceramic deer heads, picture frames, scented candles, Styrofoam orbs, widgets and whopdoodles. I kept asking myself, “Who buys this shit?” If the amount of ceramic deer heads for sale is any indication, people not only buy this shit but they buy of loads of it.
In short: I did not find the 4 TIMES scrapbook at Michael’s either, but I found another brand that would do. As I waited in the checkout line with my books, glue dots, and pack of 300 multi-colored, pre-cut 6x6 papers, the customer in line before me ran to the front of the store, grabbed something, and ran back to the register. She held up a 4 foot Santa Claus fashioned from wooden pickets. “Do you think someone would like this?” she asked me.
“Hmmmm,” I said, “depends on the someone.” I wanted to say “Lady, who in their right mind would like that?” But I knew better.
When I told a friend of mine about the current dearth of scrapbooks in stores, she reminded me that Christmas was coming; apparently, scrapbooks are popular gift items. “Easy does it, honey,” my friend warned. ‘Some people go overboard with this scrapbooking. I know one woman who turned a room in her house into scrapbooking central.”
Already I’m fantasizing how someday I’ll have whole room, a scrapbooking den, if you will. I’ll be a scrapbooking denizen. I imagine I’ll paint the walls of my room a cool, dusty blue….
Becoming a mother necessitates a dramatic shift in behavior. For example, recently I’ve been ducking into stores with names like “Scrapbooking with Grammy,” looking for a 6x6, linen-covered, elegant number produced by a company called 4 TIMES. Someone gave me this scrapbook as a shower gift, and although I didn’t know what to do with it then, I am a different person now. A scrapbooking addiction has replaced the party girl in me. And like any addict, I will go to great lengths to feed my need.
In order to document the wonder that is my daughter Clara as well as the ineffable love I feel for her, I found myself maneuvering a bright blue shopping cart through the aisles of Hobby Lobby last week. The 4 TIMES scrapbook proved particularly elusive. Not only did I fail to locate this particular brand, but also the whole scrapbooking aisle looked like desolation row. I wondered: Is scrapbooking becoming obsolete? Are craftfolk in high places phasing out this past time just as I am getting into it?
On to Michael’s: another strip-mall acre of dust-collecting crap for sale. I rolled my shopping cart past teetering displays of ceramic deer heads, picture frames, scented candles, Styrofoam orbs, widgets and whopdoodles. I kept asking myself, “Who buys this shit?” If the amount of ceramic deer heads for sale is any indication, people not only buy this shit but they buy of loads of it.
In short: I did not find the 4 TIMES scrapbook at Michael’s either, but I found another brand that would do. As I waited in the checkout line with my books, glue dots, and pack of 300 multi-colored, pre-cut 6x6 papers, the customer in line before me ran to the front of the store, grabbed something, and ran back to the register. She held up a 4 foot Santa Claus fashioned from wooden pickets. “Do you think someone would like this?” she asked me.
“Hmmmm,” I said, “depends on the someone.” I wanted to say “Lady, who in their right mind would like that?” But I knew better.
When I told a friend of mine about the current dearth of scrapbooks in stores, she reminded me that Christmas was coming; apparently, scrapbooks are popular gift items. “Easy does it, honey,” my friend warned. ‘Some people go overboard with this scrapbooking. I know one woman who turned a room in her house into scrapbooking central.”
Already I’m fantasizing how someday I’ll have whole room, a scrapbooking den, if you will. I’ll be a scrapbooking denizen. I imagine I’ll paint the walls of my room a cool, dusty blue….
Friday, December 09, 2005
A (True) Christmas Story
HEATHENS
by Christa Forster
“I’m sick of living in a pig sty,” my mother says. “We’re getting all this crap out of here.” She is standing in the middle of our one-car garage, hands on her hips, surveying the wreck. My brother Antonio kicks his skateboard across the concrete driveway, pretending he can’t hear her.
“Antonio!” I say. "Get in here and help us.”
“Shut up, Stupid,” he says. He scrapes his skateboard on the asphalt.
My mother abhors clutter. Living in a pigsty is not what she envisioned for herself, oh so many years ago.
Where we live on Mission Hill, the neighborhood fences sag under fuchsia and golden Bougainvillea. Hedges of prickly Aloe Vera guard whole front yards. Jacaranda trees, whose fanlike leaves droop with deep lavender flowers, line the streets. And Eucalyptus trees – my favorites -- tower into the blue, emitting their mentholated medicine into every breath I take. To me, our house on Guadalupe Street seems like heaven and smells like the sea, which we can just see if we stand on our tiptoes and look out the picture window at the top of the staircase.
My mother begins directing me amongst the junk: roller skates, broken Barbie body parts, kites, lawn equipment, baseball bats, leather gloves, tool boxes, book boxes, boxes of who-knows-what-and-how-long-it’s-been-in-here. Every few minutes, I hold up an object, confused about what to do with it: an old record player, a stack of opera albums, a lame ukulele.
“Throw it out!” mom says, “When was the last time anyone touched it?"
Sometimes I say “But I want it.”
“Then take it to your room,” she says.
Next door, Mrs. Banda’s goat Mephisto bleats loudly and poops all over her patio. The sound and smell of Mephisto confirms my mother’s conviction that our house is, indeed, a pigsty. Antonio and I love Mephisto. He’s better than a dog because he has horns and tries to butt us all the time and eats the clothes we’re wearing.
“Here,” mom yells, “take this and throw it in the dump pile.” She tosses a large, plastic figurine into the driveway.
“Antonio!” I yell. "Mom wants you to throw that in the truck.” He gives me the finger. “Mom SAID, “ I say.
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” he says.
It's the Virgin Mary figurine from the illuminated lawn Nativity scene that my mom bought at St. Vincent de Paul’s two years ago. When my mom sees me pick it up and hesitate, she yells at me to throw it directly into the back of the truck. “Straight to the dump!” she says.
“Mom,” I say, “you can’t throw the Blessed Virgin Mary away. It’s, like, a sin probably.”
“I got her at the thrift store, for god's sake. I'll get a new one. K-Mart has a bunch of them. I saw‘em there just the other day.”
I look at the Virgin’s face.
“If you want her,” my mom says, “take her to your room.”
Her blue mantel has faded to a hint of its former glory, and her eyes are pretty much gone. “I guess I don’t want her,” I say. I lift her into the back of the Dodge pickup. Antonio appears, zipping his fly.
“Antonio,” my mom calls, “put these in there, too." She’s pointing to the rest of the set: Joseph, Baby Jesus in the crib, the Sheep, the Ducks, “they're all going to the dump.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say.
That evening as she's cutting up carrots for dinner, my mother stops chopping, knife midair, and stares off into space, as if she's forgotten something. Then she turns to me and asks, "Do you think I should not have thrown that Holy Family away?"
On Christmas day, my family sits in the second row of folding chairs set up in the church’s gymnasium for the 11 a.m. folk mass. Father Esparza, standing at the pulpit, retells the famous “No Room at the Inn” story, the one where Joseph and Mary search the little town of Bethlehem for lodging to no avail.
“There is no room at the end,” says Father Esparza. “And Mary and Joseph must stay in a manger on the outskirts of town. Hence, our savior was born in a pigsty.”
Until he points directly to it, I haven’t focused on the Nativity scene set up in front of the altar. This one's colors are bright and the faces detailed, way prettier than the set we had. Father Esparza explains how a member of the congregation -- Debbie Marshall – arrived at the rectory one afternoon with the same Nativity scene in her car trunk. The figures, covered with black gook and slime, she’d rescued from the city dump. She cleaned and repainted them. She was there to donate them to the church.
“She found them there,” Father said. “cast away, like they were 2000 years ago in the little town of Bethlehem. I want you all to contemplate the question: what would you do if the Holy Family came knocking on your door? Would you invite them in? Or would you, too, cast them away?"
Suddenly, my mom pushes my dad and he bumps into me. I look up and see that they are both stifling hysterics.
On the way home from church, my dad says, “You know she killed herself.”
“Who killed herself?” Antonio says.
“Debbie Marshall.”
I don’t say anything because I am never talking to my family ever again.
“She was depressed,“ says my dad.
“She was an artist,” says my mom.
“Maybe she killed herself because she was depressed that someone threw away the Holy Family,” Antonio says, laughing.
“Highly improbable,” says my mom.
“You know, she probably did,” says my dad.
“Warren,” says my mom, “don't say something like that.”
“What?” says my dad. “I think it would be great if she killed herself because you threw away the Holy Family.”
“Oh go to hell, Warren,” she says. She turns around and looks me in the eye. “When we get home, Missy” she says, “I want that room of yours spotless.”
by Christa Forster
“I’m sick of living in a pig sty,” my mother says. “We’re getting all this crap out of here.” She is standing in the middle of our one-car garage, hands on her hips, surveying the wreck. My brother Antonio kicks his skateboard across the concrete driveway, pretending he can’t hear her.
“Antonio!” I say. "Get in here and help us.”
“Shut up, Stupid,” he says. He scrapes his skateboard on the asphalt.
My mother abhors clutter. Living in a pigsty is not what she envisioned for herself, oh so many years ago.
Where we live on Mission Hill, the neighborhood fences sag under fuchsia and golden Bougainvillea. Hedges of prickly Aloe Vera guard whole front yards. Jacaranda trees, whose fanlike leaves droop with deep lavender flowers, line the streets. And Eucalyptus trees – my favorites -- tower into the blue, emitting their mentholated medicine into every breath I take. To me, our house on Guadalupe Street seems like heaven and smells like the sea, which we can just see if we stand on our tiptoes and look out the picture window at the top of the staircase.
My mother begins directing me amongst the junk: roller skates, broken Barbie body parts, kites, lawn equipment, baseball bats, leather gloves, tool boxes, book boxes, boxes of who-knows-what-and-how-long-it’s-been-in-here. Every few minutes, I hold up an object, confused about what to do with it: an old record player, a stack of opera albums, a lame ukulele.
“Throw it out!” mom says, “When was the last time anyone touched it?"
Sometimes I say “But I want it.”
“Then take it to your room,” she says.
Next door, Mrs. Banda’s goat Mephisto bleats loudly and poops all over her patio. The sound and smell of Mephisto confirms my mother’s conviction that our house is, indeed, a pigsty. Antonio and I love Mephisto. He’s better than a dog because he has horns and tries to butt us all the time and eats the clothes we’re wearing.
“Here,” mom yells, “take this and throw it in the dump pile.” She tosses a large, plastic figurine into the driveway.
“Antonio!” I yell. "Mom wants you to throw that in the truck.” He gives me the finger. “Mom SAID, “ I say.
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” he says.
It's the Virgin Mary figurine from the illuminated lawn Nativity scene that my mom bought at St. Vincent de Paul’s two years ago. When my mom sees me pick it up and hesitate, she yells at me to throw it directly into the back of the truck. “Straight to the dump!” she says.
“Mom,” I say, “you can’t throw the Blessed Virgin Mary away. It’s, like, a sin probably.”
“I got her at the thrift store, for god's sake. I'll get a new one. K-Mart has a bunch of them. I saw‘em there just the other day.”
I look at the Virgin’s face.
“If you want her,” my mom says, “take her to your room.”
Her blue mantel has faded to a hint of its former glory, and her eyes are pretty much gone. “I guess I don’t want her,” I say. I lift her into the back of the Dodge pickup. Antonio appears, zipping his fly.
“Antonio,” my mom calls, “put these in there, too." She’s pointing to the rest of the set: Joseph, Baby Jesus in the crib, the Sheep, the Ducks, “they're all going to the dump.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say.
That evening as she's cutting up carrots for dinner, my mother stops chopping, knife midair, and stares off into space, as if she's forgotten something. Then she turns to me and asks, "Do you think I should not have thrown that Holy Family away?"
On Christmas day, my family sits in the second row of folding chairs set up in the church’s gymnasium for the 11 a.m. folk mass. Father Esparza, standing at the pulpit, retells the famous “No Room at the Inn” story, the one where Joseph and Mary search the little town of Bethlehem for lodging to no avail.
“There is no room at the end,” says Father Esparza. “And Mary and Joseph must stay in a manger on the outskirts of town. Hence, our savior was born in a pigsty.”
Until he points directly to it, I haven’t focused on the Nativity scene set up in front of the altar. This one's colors are bright and the faces detailed, way prettier than the set we had. Father Esparza explains how a member of the congregation -- Debbie Marshall – arrived at the rectory one afternoon with the same Nativity scene in her car trunk. The figures, covered with black gook and slime, she’d rescued from the city dump. She cleaned and repainted them. She was there to donate them to the church.
“She found them there,” Father said. “cast away, like they were 2000 years ago in the little town of Bethlehem. I want you all to contemplate the question: what would you do if the Holy Family came knocking on your door? Would you invite them in? Or would you, too, cast them away?"
Suddenly, my mom pushes my dad and he bumps into me. I look up and see that they are both stifling hysterics.
On the way home from church, my dad says, “You know she killed herself.”
“Who killed herself?” Antonio says.
“Debbie Marshall.”
I don’t say anything because I am never talking to my family ever again.
“She was depressed,“ says my dad.
“She was an artist,” says my mom.
“Maybe she killed herself because she was depressed that someone threw away the Holy Family,” Antonio says, laughing.
“Highly improbable,” says my mom.
“You know, she probably did,” says my dad.
“Warren,” says my mom, “don't say something like that.”
“What?” says my dad. “I think it would be great if she killed herself because you threw away the Holy Family.”
“Oh go to hell, Warren,” she says. She turns around and looks me in the eye. “When we get home, Missy” she says, “I want that room of yours spotless.”
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Critique of Poetry, No. 2
1. If you don't read poetry, you are missing something essential for soul growth.
2. If you read poetry, you have realized why so few people read it.
3. If you don't read poetry, you watch too much television and have allowed Jon Stewart to become your bard.
4. If you have allowed Jon Stewart to become your bard, it's okay because he is a bard, of sorts.
5. Still, you might try reading some William Blake or some...William Blake and, I promise, you will love Jon Stewart even more.
6. In truth, it takes some training to read William Blake in any way that might make deep sense to you. So if you're gonna read William Blake, read something about William Blake, too, helping you understand why William Blake is the father of people like Jon Stewart.
7. William Blake isn't the father of Jon Stewart, metaphorically, of course. Probably Jonathan Swift is. Proof is they share the same initials.
8. I have been considering getting cable so that I can watch Jon Stewart, but I have been holding off because: would it be worth it? Really?
9. I think it really would be worth it.
10. Nine is my favorite number so I'm gonna stop there.
2. If you read poetry, you have realized why so few people read it.
3. If you don't read poetry, you watch too much television and have allowed Jon Stewart to become your bard.
4. If you have allowed Jon Stewart to become your bard, it's okay because he is a bard, of sorts.
5. Still, you might try reading some William Blake or some...William Blake and, I promise, you will love Jon Stewart even more.
6. In truth, it takes some training to read William Blake in any way that might make deep sense to you. So if you're gonna read William Blake, read something about William Blake, too, helping you understand why William Blake is the father of people like Jon Stewart.
7. William Blake isn't the father of Jon Stewart, metaphorically, of course. Probably Jonathan Swift is. Proof is they share the same initials.
8. I have been considering getting cable so that I can watch Jon Stewart, but I have been holding off because: would it be worth it? Really?
9. I think it really would be worth it.
10. Nine is my favorite number so I'm gonna stop there.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Every Person in My Dream is Me
A few mornings ago, I dreamt that I was skateboarding up a mountain, wearing a formal gown the color of ashes. I had a windbreaker on over the gown. At the top of the mountain, I found a man-made lake surrounded by RVs full of elderly people; it was like a Good Sam Club Convention. Deciding this was no place for a girl like me, I turned and started skateboarding down the mountain, which was A LOT harder than going up the mountain. I kept having to go off the side of the road to stop myself from losing total control. On one of these forced stops, my skateboard landed in some grass next to a python-length of dog poop. My right front wheel was touching the poop, but I hadn't actually run over it, into it: what a relief. At some point down the mountain, I pit-stopped at a girls' college and picked up Clara, who was a baby still. We went to the gross cafeteria and tried to find some food, but all they were serving was fried catfish and two day old french fries. The cafeteria's ambience was like a Vegas cafeteria -- cigarette smoke-coated carpet, weird 70s chandeliers, and wine red padded wall paper. We left the cafeteria and wandered through the girls' dormitory to find our way out of the college. As we were walking through the the dorm, I noticed that all the girls were fat and just sitting around on their butts getting fatter. "I don't think any of these girls are good babysitters for you, Clara," I said. Then I woke up.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Critique of Poetry, No. 1
Like many other evacuees-who-who-couldn’t-actually-evacuate during Hurricane Rita, I have been suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. My friend Shannon has been suffering, too (30 hours to Lufkin). I know it's pantywaist of me to complain, living as I do in the realm of Katrina victims, so I haven't been complaining. And I haven't been writing.
But in the interim, a bunch of interesting things about me (what else is this blog about? Remember I'm an Aries) have arisen. Some of these things are physically dramatic; some of them psychologically dramatic; some of them spiritually dramatic. Some of them all those things simultaneously.
Note: every other critique I've ever read about poetry inevitably capitalizes on the word simultaneously, annoying me to the point that I avoid critiques of poetry as often as I can. Even though simultaneously is how poetry works in truth. In poetry, all these different meanings about life occur simultaneously. It's uncanny.
That's what has been happening to me: all these different meanings have been occurring simultaneously.
Syllogism: In my life, all these different meanings have been occurring simultaneously. Poetry is meaning that occurs simultaneously. Therefore my life is poetry.
Note: See the John Malkovich/Gary Sinese version of Sam Shepard's play True West. It's unforgettable.
Note: This is not a critique of poetry.
Note: I sort of hate the word simultaneously.
Exhibit !
CHEERLEADER
In high school, I was a varsity cheerleader. There was a football player with hair the color of scrambled eggs who loved me. I couldn't love him because his hair reminded me of food, which was too gross, and because we didn't have sustained chemistry. I did make out with him a few times in my 67 Blue Ford Ranchero, but then I had to call him finally and give him the spiel that it wasn't he, it was I. And that was true. Cliché as it may sound.
Girls who are cheerleaders inspire all sorts of stereotypical thinking, which is why throughout college and graduate school, I kept the fact that I was a varsity cheerleader for two years in high school under wraps. I sat by and listened while people made fun of girls who were cheerleaders; more specifically: made fun of cheerleaders. I don't think they thought so much about the girls, only the word labeling them. Some of the stereotypes I heard included "dumb" "perky" "loose" "fake" "popular", etc. I might have been all of those things at some point in my life, but I was never all of them simultaneously.
Recently, I visited an old high school friend who lives now with her husband and three children in Cypress, TX. She finds herself worrying, like any valedictorian-cum-mom who finds herself living in the Dante-esque world that is a Houston, TX suburb, about her three year old's impending obsession with cheerleading. This is the land, folks, of "Friday Night Lights." It's the home of Wanda Holloway, the cheerleader's mom who conspired to kill another cheerleader. I am not surprised my friend worries.
She wanted to know about my experience as a cheerleader. Normally, I'm embarrassed to talk about it because of all the group-think/resistance around this lifestyle choice. But I talked about it, because Kim was my best friend in High School.
In the 9th grade I found myself thrown into the cauldron of PUBLIC SCHOOL. Capistrano Valley High School, unlike the catholic high school 45 minutes away on the freeway, was a 10-minute car ride up the road. That's where my parents sent me because, they said, it was closer to home; therefore, I wouldn't end up dead on the freeway. Really, they sent me there because it was FREE. I went from going to elementary and middle school with the same 30 characters for 9 years, to going to my freshman classes with 30 different people every 50 minutes. There were so many kids at my school, my graduating class held 754 students. At my high school, the dress code was FREE DRESS. And I learned early on the primacy of first impressions and the power of clothes to speak meanings about one's self to other people. There was an atrium "mall" area in the middle of our classroom hubs, where live plants grew and the buzz of WASPs dominated the lunchtime feedings on chimichangas, soft pretzels, and one another. In truth, I felt the same way Mephistopheles felt when asked by Faust how he'd gotten free from hell; Mephisto looks at Faust in surprise: "Why this is hell [my friend], nor am I out of it." CVHS = Hell.
Note: In The Historical Tragedy of Dr. Faustus, Faust does intimate that "hell" may not be such a bad place to be, especially with a friend like Mephistopheles. It's bad, don't get me wrong; but it's not a damnation to be completely dismissed. There is no love there, true. But there is a lot of diversion otherwise.
Anyway, high school was hellacious. Specifically, it was for me because I had to come up with something different to wear every day. I'd been wearing a uniform for the past eight years; I didn't know how to construct myself yet in a good enough superficial way to communicate truly the meanings that I carried inside me. It required much thought, much artistry. And honestly, I didn't want to care that much about the surface. I wanted the uniform, so I could concentrate on other things, deeper things-- like boys and God and when I was gonna get my first kiss. When you haven't yet been kissed, the question of when you will finally be kissed is an all-consuming question. I don't know what I learned in school until I was kissed. It's like the academics before that moment in high school are a blur....
Syllogism: Cheerleaders wore uniforms; I wanted to wear a uniform; therefore, I wanted to be a cheerleader.
I tried out at the end of freshman year. I didn't make it. I cried for a day.
I tried out again at the end of sophomore year. I made it. I got to wear Adidas sweat pants and my cheerleading polo shirts to school nearly every day for the next two years. And I even learned to like wearing the cute little cheerleading skirts. They made me look cute, dammit. And I had boys I wanted to kiss! So many boys. I knew enough to know that boys know the cute when they see it.
But I was a good girl, which means, I was a virgin well out of high school. I'm glad, too. I think.
Ultimately, I think cheerleading helped me. I was painfully shy when I was young. PAINFULLY. Shy. People who know me now find this hard to comprehend. You can't really be a painfully shy cheerleader. Cheerleading helped me develop my social skills so that I could negotiate things like my virginity. I could use my very large brain to woo the boys, I could use my cute legs, too, but ultimately my very large brain would be the thing they saw, the thing they wanted to know in the Biblical sense.
I could be wrong.
Regardless, now in this time, I am simultaneously all the things I've been in my life: three-year-old, cheerleader, poet, mom.
"The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person," said Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish, Nobel Prize Winning Poet, in his poem "Ars Poetica."
Note: Read Czeslaw (Ches-lahv) Milosz (Me-lohzh). He died last year.
Milosz, too, was a kind of cheerleader. A spiritual one. May he rest in peace.
But in the interim, a bunch of interesting things about me (what else is this blog about? Remember I'm an Aries) have arisen. Some of these things are physically dramatic; some of them psychologically dramatic; some of them spiritually dramatic. Some of them all those things simultaneously.
Note: every other critique I've ever read about poetry inevitably capitalizes on the word simultaneously, annoying me to the point that I avoid critiques of poetry as often as I can. Even though simultaneously is how poetry works in truth. In poetry, all these different meanings about life occur simultaneously. It's uncanny.
That's what has been happening to me: all these different meanings have been occurring simultaneously.
Syllogism: In my life, all these different meanings have been occurring simultaneously. Poetry is meaning that occurs simultaneously. Therefore my life is poetry.
Note: See the John Malkovich/Gary Sinese version of Sam Shepard's play True West. It's unforgettable.
Note: This is not a critique of poetry.
Note: I sort of hate the word simultaneously.
Exhibit !
CHEERLEADER
In high school, I was a varsity cheerleader. There was a football player with hair the color of scrambled eggs who loved me. I couldn't love him because his hair reminded me of food, which was too gross, and because we didn't have sustained chemistry. I did make out with him a few times in my 67 Blue Ford Ranchero, but then I had to call him finally and give him the spiel that it wasn't he, it was I. And that was true. Cliché as it may sound.
Girls who are cheerleaders inspire all sorts of stereotypical thinking, which is why throughout college and graduate school, I kept the fact that I was a varsity cheerleader for two years in high school under wraps. I sat by and listened while people made fun of girls who were cheerleaders; more specifically: made fun of cheerleaders. I don't think they thought so much about the girls, only the word labeling them. Some of the stereotypes I heard included "dumb" "perky" "loose" "fake" "popular", etc. I might have been all of those things at some point in my life, but I was never all of them simultaneously.
Recently, I visited an old high school friend who lives now with her husband and three children in Cypress, TX. She finds herself worrying, like any valedictorian-cum-mom who finds herself living in the Dante-esque world that is a Houston, TX suburb, about her three year old's impending obsession with cheerleading. This is the land, folks, of "Friday Night Lights." It's the home of Wanda Holloway, the cheerleader's mom who conspired to kill another cheerleader. I am not surprised my friend worries.
She wanted to know about my experience as a cheerleader. Normally, I'm embarrassed to talk about it because of all the group-think/resistance around this lifestyle choice. But I talked about it, because Kim was my best friend in High School.
In the 9th grade I found myself thrown into the cauldron of PUBLIC SCHOOL. Capistrano Valley High School, unlike the catholic high school 45 minutes away on the freeway, was a 10-minute car ride up the road. That's where my parents sent me because, they said, it was closer to home; therefore, I wouldn't end up dead on the freeway. Really, they sent me there because it was FREE. I went from going to elementary and middle school with the same 30 characters for 9 years, to going to my freshman classes with 30 different people every 50 minutes. There were so many kids at my school, my graduating class held 754 students. At my high school, the dress code was FREE DRESS. And I learned early on the primacy of first impressions and the power of clothes to speak meanings about one's self to other people. There was an atrium "mall" area in the middle of our classroom hubs, where live plants grew and the buzz of WASPs dominated the lunchtime feedings on chimichangas, soft pretzels, and one another. In truth, I felt the same way Mephistopheles felt when asked by Faust how he'd gotten free from hell; Mephisto looks at Faust in surprise: "Why this is hell [my friend], nor am I out of it." CVHS = Hell.
Note: In The Historical Tragedy of Dr. Faustus, Faust does intimate that "hell" may not be such a bad place to be, especially with a friend like Mephistopheles. It's bad, don't get me wrong; but it's not a damnation to be completely dismissed. There is no love there, true. But there is a lot of diversion otherwise.
Anyway, high school was hellacious. Specifically, it was for me because I had to come up with something different to wear every day. I'd been wearing a uniform for the past eight years; I didn't know how to construct myself yet in a good enough superficial way to communicate truly the meanings that I carried inside me. It required much thought, much artistry. And honestly, I didn't want to care that much about the surface. I wanted the uniform, so I could concentrate on other things, deeper things-- like boys and God and when I was gonna get my first kiss. When you haven't yet been kissed, the question of when you will finally be kissed is an all-consuming question. I don't know what I learned in school until I was kissed. It's like the academics before that moment in high school are a blur....
Syllogism: Cheerleaders wore uniforms; I wanted to wear a uniform; therefore, I wanted to be a cheerleader.
I tried out at the end of freshman year. I didn't make it. I cried for a day.
I tried out again at the end of sophomore year. I made it. I got to wear Adidas sweat pants and my cheerleading polo shirts to school nearly every day for the next two years. And I even learned to like wearing the cute little cheerleading skirts. They made me look cute, dammit. And I had boys I wanted to kiss! So many boys. I knew enough to know that boys know the cute when they see it.
But I was a good girl, which means, I was a virgin well out of high school. I'm glad, too. I think.
Ultimately, I think cheerleading helped me. I was painfully shy when I was young. PAINFULLY. Shy. People who know me now find this hard to comprehend. You can't really be a painfully shy cheerleader. Cheerleading helped me develop my social skills so that I could negotiate things like my virginity. I could use my very large brain to woo the boys, I could use my cute legs, too, but ultimately my very large brain would be the thing they saw, the thing they wanted to know in the Biblical sense.
I could be wrong.
Regardless, now in this time, I am simultaneously all the things I've been in my life: three-year-old, cheerleader, poet, mom.
"The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person," said Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish, Nobel Prize Winning Poet, in his poem "Ars Poetica."
Note: Read Czeslaw (Ches-lahv) Milosz (Me-lohzh). He died last year.
Milosz, too, was a kind of cheerleader. A spiritual one. May he rest in peace.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Retarded
While Hurricane Rita was gearing up to become a category 4/5 storm, our slumlord warned us that we would probably need to evacuate because our house would blow away in such a storm. This was six days before Rita was slated to hit the Gulf Coast. I went to Target that Tuesday to prepare the evacuation kit. I didn't fare too well, because, well, I am Hurricane-retarded. I guess I'm a hurricane retard because I grew up with earthquakes, which, as far as natural disasters go, have the good manners NOT to announce their impending doom.
Retarded: for example, for twenty minutes, I stood in front of the shelf of unaffordable clock radios, looking for something affordable that would work on regular batteries. I was pissed that there were no regular "transistor"-type radios. What the hell happened to transistor radios? Are they obsolete or something? As I'm picking up one clock radio after another to check what type of battery each one uses, this woman walks up to the shelf and grabs this box that was sitting right there -- a portable transistor type radio. All along I thought that the picture on the box was a video camera, so I hadn't looked at it closely. PISSED! I watched the woman handle the box, turning it over and around to look at the features, and I know she could feel my foaming at the mouth for that radio. I wanted to say, "Um, excuse me but I was here before you were, and, like you, I am looking for a transistor-type radio. And, uh, I saw that box earlier, but I thought it was a video camera, so I didn't pick it up, but now that I see that it's a radio -- the exact kind I've been wanting the whole time, the only reason I even came to Target in the first place -- I think you should let me have it."
R-e-t-a-r-d-e-d.
Retarded: for example, for twenty minutes, I stood in front of the shelf of unaffordable clock radios, looking for something affordable that would work on regular batteries. I was pissed that there were no regular "transistor"-type radios. What the hell happened to transistor radios? Are they obsolete or something? As I'm picking up one clock radio after another to check what type of battery each one uses, this woman walks up to the shelf and grabs this box that was sitting right there -- a portable transistor type radio. All along I thought that the picture on the box was a video camera, so I hadn't looked at it closely. PISSED! I watched the woman handle the box, turning it over and around to look at the features, and I know she could feel my foaming at the mouth for that radio. I wanted to say, "Um, excuse me but I was here before you were, and, like you, I am looking for a transistor-type radio. And, uh, I saw that box earlier, but I thought it was a video camera, so I didn't pick it up, but now that I see that it's a radio -- the exact kind I've been wanting the whole time, the only reason I even came to Target in the first place -- I think you should let me have it."
R-e-t-a-r-d-e-d.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Destiny's Child
When I was in third grade, Sr. Mary Roch allowed us to complete our schoolwork at our own pace. When we were through with the assignments, we could go to the classroom library -- a shelf of mostly religious books underneath the windows. Always, I'd rush through my work to get to the books. Handwriting was the main subject of my early education. And even more than I loved the endless handwriting assignments, I LOVED reading. Any my favorite books were religious stories, tales about gods and saints.
I will not forget the day I plopped down on the purple rug in front of the shelf and filed my finger along the spines of books to choose from. I hit upon an arresting title: Superstition. Knowing that the Catholic religion denounced superstitious beliefs (we'd been told religiously during Religion class that superstitious beliefs were "evil"), when I found the book, a thrill ricocheted through my brain. I opened the book, skimmed the pages. A phrase caught my attention: "Hair Color."
The author of the book classified hair color into three categories: Blonds, Brunettes, and Redheads. It said, and I quote: "Blonds are vivacious, friendly, pretty and talkative; Brunettes are deep thinkers, loyal, and they make good wives; Redheads are witches and should be burned at the stake."
I did not understand cliché, nor was I developmentally ready to understand stereotypes. In third grade, I was still pretty literal; I felt slapped, stabbed, diminished and discovered by this verdict. I hadn't CHOSEN to be a redhead. Why should I have to suffer so?
I wondered, "Does Sr. Mary Roch know this is here?" I shoved the book down the front of my jumper and stole back to my desk, intuiting that if Sr. Mary Roch caught me reading it, she would take it away. I really wanted to see what other truths about the world this book held. I would immerse myself in Superstition at home. I sat back down, picked up my pen and resumed practicing penmanship.
I can remember walking home from school or from Shorty's market, and some of the public school kids would pass me and mutter under their breath, "I'd rather be dead than be red." It happened so many times, I now realize the absurdity of the situation (1970s Orange County, post-communist anti-communist sentiment, weirdly enough) Sometimes an older guy -- a teenager -- would ask me as he passed me, "are you red all over?" which sounds totally evil to a 11 year old.
Believe me, I asked God for a lot of help and a lot of forgiveness for my inherent evil nature. Original Sin is a piece of cake compared to the fate of hair color.
I will not forget the day I plopped down on the purple rug in front of the shelf and filed my finger along the spines of books to choose from. I hit upon an arresting title: Superstition. Knowing that the Catholic religion denounced superstitious beliefs (we'd been told religiously during Religion class that superstitious beliefs were "evil"), when I found the book, a thrill ricocheted through my brain. I opened the book, skimmed the pages. A phrase caught my attention: "Hair Color."
The author of the book classified hair color into three categories: Blonds, Brunettes, and Redheads. It said, and I quote: "Blonds are vivacious, friendly, pretty and talkative; Brunettes are deep thinkers, loyal, and they make good wives; Redheads are witches and should be burned at the stake."
I did not understand cliché, nor was I developmentally ready to understand stereotypes. In third grade, I was still pretty literal; I felt slapped, stabbed, diminished and discovered by this verdict. I hadn't CHOSEN to be a redhead. Why should I have to suffer so?
I wondered, "Does Sr. Mary Roch know this is here?" I shoved the book down the front of my jumper and stole back to my desk, intuiting that if Sr. Mary Roch caught me reading it, she would take it away. I really wanted to see what other truths about the world this book held. I would immerse myself in Superstition at home. I sat back down, picked up my pen and resumed practicing penmanship.
I can remember walking home from school or from Shorty's market, and some of the public school kids would pass me and mutter under their breath, "I'd rather be dead than be red." It happened so many times, I now realize the absurdity of the situation (1970s Orange County, post-communist anti-communist sentiment, weirdly enough) Sometimes an older guy -- a teenager -- would ask me as he passed me, "are you red all over?" which sounds totally evil to a 11 year old.
Believe me, I asked God for a lot of help and a lot of forgiveness for my inherent evil nature. Original Sin is a piece of cake compared to the fate of hair color.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Learning to Take a Compliment
Many people have told me that my writing is upsetting, not specifically here in this blog, but in general. I take that as a compliment.
Some people have told me I'm a genius: most vociferously, my mom. I take it as a compliment.
Other people have told me that they hate my work, that they have no idea what to make of it, no idea what it's about. I take that as a compliment.
One time, in graduate school, the writer Rosellen Brown told me that an essay of mine about my dad -- called "Weapons" -- was, for her, harder to stomach than a Sam Shepherd play.
I took THAT as a total compliment.
Some people have told me I'm a genius: most vociferously, my mom. I take it as a compliment.
Other people have told me that they hate my work, that they have no idea what to make of it, no idea what it's about. I take that as a compliment.
One time, in graduate school, the writer Rosellen Brown told me that an essay of mine about my dad -- called "Weapons" -- was, for her, harder to stomach than a Sam Shepherd play.
I took THAT as a total compliment.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Here's a poem I wrote in 2000
Pretty, Soon
Pretty soon if we don’t do the thing
we need to do, the windows (they might shatter)
will implode. And all the lights we would
have lit inside our homes will find the shadows
we’ve become. The falls and rises, things
which flipped our hearts, will fail to thrill
us anymore. The winds that spank wisteria
spores around the driveway -- all will end.
Rain corpuscles and cloud-pimpled skies
will cough up helicopter carnage.
Little boys will suffocate and die.
Women’s flesh might melt from bone;
cunts will crumble. There’s a girl named Thursday
downstairs. Her boyfriend lives with her (a whore
the neighbors say, siren, femme fatal).
Hell has a special ring for her, we’ve heard.
Lucky girl. I wonder if she knows
the thing we need to do. Pretty soon
if we don’t do it, they might turn us in
to law-abiding citizens. Why
do they abide? And who are they, besides?
Might they be those whose dumb philosophies
despise the chaos that’s erupting here?
What is there to fear? Every thing
is everything. There is nothing so dear
it can’t be rent and made more beautiful
than it was when it first began. All
my little pretty ones, and ugly ones,
too, take off your shoes and socks, your shirt,
your pants, your underwear. Take off your skin
and peel the sinew from your bones. Go back
to being less than everything you have
become. It must be done. You’ll see.
Pretty soon if we don’t do the thing
we need to do, the windows (they might shatter)
will implode. And all the lights we would
have lit inside our homes will find the shadows
we’ve become. The falls and rises, things
which flipped our hearts, will fail to thrill
us anymore. The winds that spank wisteria
spores around the driveway -- all will end.
Rain corpuscles and cloud-pimpled skies
will cough up helicopter carnage.
Little boys will suffocate and die.
Women’s flesh might melt from bone;
cunts will crumble. There’s a girl named Thursday
downstairs. Her boyfriend lives with her (a whore
the neighbors say, siren, femme fatal).
Hell has a special ring for her, we’ve heard.
Lucky girl. I wonder if she knows
the thing we need to do. Pretty soon
if we don’t do it, they might turn us in
to law-abiding citizens. Why
do they abide? And who are they, besides?
Might they be those whose dumb philosophies
despise the chaos that’s erupting here?
What is there to fear? Every thing
is everything. There is nothing so dear
it can’t be rent and made more beautiful
than it was when it first began. All
my little pretty ones, and ugly ones,
too, take off your shoes and socks, your shirt,
your pants, your underwear. Take off your skin
and peel the sinew from your bones. Go back
to being less than everything you have
become. It must be done. You’ll see.
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